RADIO STATION GETS BOMB THREAT

In the continuing battle among Miami's Spanish-language radio stations for ideological dominance of the airwaves, one station received a bomb threat on Monday for playing music from Cuba.

WRTO and three stations had to evacuate a building they share at 2828 Coral Way in Miami after WRTO-FM (98.3) received the bomb scare about 11 a.m., police said. Station employees also received telephoned death threats in recent days from people who accused them of being allies of Fidel Castro for playing the music of groups whose members live in Cuba.

The bomb scare and personal threats forced WRTO to take the disputed music off the air. The station heard throughout Dade and Broward counties also had lost some major advertisements.

Disagreements as to whether Cuban exiles should have any connection to Cuba are common in Miami, and frequently the disputes spill over onto the airwaves. The latest controversy began a few weeks ago after WRTO started playing the music of popular Cuban groups such as Los Van Van and NG La Banda - a first for Miami radio.

Some callers complained, but then WRTO polled listeners to determine whether it should play the music of Cuban bands from the island. About 480 callers responded - about 90 percent of them young Cuban-Americans - and by a 3-1 margin they favored playing the music.

The response was hailed as a sign of growing tolerance in Miami, where playing the music of groups from Cuba has long been opposed.

On Monday, however, it was clear that the breakthrough was short-lived.

Tomas Garcia Fuste, news director at hardline WCMQ, attacked WRTO for playing "communist" music. Some WRTO employees responded by accusing Garcia Fuste of inciting violence against the rival station during his morning talk show called "Open Microphone."Garcia Fuste did not return phone calls.

A receptionist at WRTO told police that an elderly man called about 11 a.m. and said there was a bomb in the building, said Angel Calzadilla, a spokesman for the Miami Police Department.

The scare also affected WAMR-FM Amor (107.5), WQBA-AM La Cubanisima (1140), and WAQI-AM Radio Mambi (710), even though they disagreed with WRTO's decision to play the Cuban bands. Employees from all four stations were briefly evacuated while police searched for suspicious packages, but none was found, Calzadilla said. Programming was slightly altered throughout the day.

But that wasn't the only cause for alarm. WRTO Program Director Gino "Gino Latino" Reyes and other employees recently had received death threats.

"The Saturday after the survey, a man called the show and said that he was going to kill Gino and I because we were communists," said Illeana Garcia, a popular WRTO disc jockey.

As a result, station managers stopped playing the music.

"We made a mistake when we played that music," WRTO station manager Luis Diaz Albertini said. On the other side of the Florida Straits, Juan Formell, founder and musical director of Los Van Van, was not amused by the the furor his music has sparked. "There is no political propaganda in my music," Formell said. "It's all cultural."

Because of the controversy, WRTO also lost a few major advertisers, including Headquarter Toyota, Midway Ford and the Florida Marlins.

Leaders of Miami's arts community decried the threats. But they said such friction between older Cuban exiles vehemently opposed to Castro and younger Cuban-Americans striving to make the region a more tolerant place is inevitable.

"There's always that tension occurring when things are changing," said Lisa Versaci, director of Florida People for the American Way. "But we must condemn violence and intimidation. There are many ways to protest legally."